FreeCAD: Part Or Part Design? which one? Answered in 5 minutes (approx)

Freecad part design workbench or FreeCAD part workbench? Which one should I use for my CAD modelling and why. In this essay beginners tutorial I explain in around 5 minutes my choices for selecting either or to help you with your choice of workflow
#freecad , #CAD, #3DPrinting,
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[@KnotHead1008]

I'd love to see a series on work flows. The different starting work flows going into the different work benches depending on the type of part.

[@Sembazuru]

This is the video that I've wanted to see since I started dabbling in FreeCAD for both modelling for 3D printing and modelling for part representations in KiCAD.

[@KnotHead1008]

Now after watching this 3 times now, I’m understanding the difference between the two.

[@Creamms]

I still don't fully get it 🤣

[@Kotaztrafee]

I always have to watch video at least three times. Sometimes at half speed.

[@carbonbased5041]

This is the best explanation I have seen so far. A note for those, who has problems to understand it: it will be clear once you start using Freecad real hard.

Great overview, thanks! As you are asking for our perspective - about two years ago I have started using Linkstage3 FreeCAD branch and I never looked back. It supports multi-body Part Design and has may other improvements over the standard FreeCAD. It is also much better with the topological naming problem (but not perfect). Changes are being merged back into the main FreeCAD but that will take time - and in the meantime I'll continue using Linkstage3.

[@paulswarthout9967]

As a beginner with 3D printing, and thus FreeCAD, I see now that many things that I struggle with in Part Design Workbench might not be such a struggle in the Part Workbench.

[@spheretical3609]

You sorted in my brain what part design is all about. That you have to be working with a single compound per body was not something that I understood until 5 mins ago. Thank you! I'll still probably mostly work with the part wb.

[@crossthreadaeroindustries8554]

2:50 Thanks you cleared up why I was having problems "padding" unattached areas of a sketch in "Part Design."

[@yertelt5570]

FreeCAD 1.0 RC start screen gives a few options for what kind of file you want to open or create, which is nice because you have 6 options to choose from rather than 18 workbenches to try to figure out. The first option is "create parametric part" which takes you directly to the part design workbench, if you want to use the part workbench to create your model you have to select it from the workbench drop down menu, so it seems like FreeCAD may be trying to nudge people in the direction of the part design workbench. I've just started playing around with FreeCAD, but I've been using Solidworks for over 20 years. The part design workbench has more of a SolidWorks feel to it's work flow but I've only been playing around with basic geometric shapes. I haven't tried anything complex like trying to loft a body, do a swept cut, or revolved body yet. Hopefully they get a stable release of 1.0 soon.

[@GerhardBothaWFF]

Freecad is great. But it needs a review of all the workbenches. Between Draft, Curves, Part & Part Design you have too many almost the same options.

[@hypocritical7379]

definitely, functionality like text needs to be in both part and part design

[@pinchtwo654]

Thank you for this video, and your others as well. This is the simplest, clearest explanation I've found so far and now I feel like I have a better understanding of which workbench is appropriate for various scenarios. I work a hybrid job as both a mechanical engineer and a machinist and the CAD software we use at my day job is Autodesk's Inventor, but a friend and I are starting a welding and fabrication side business. I only run Linux on my personal computers, so I've chosen FreeCAD as my CAD solution to get this side business off the ground as it looks to be the most well developed CAD software in the Linux world. It's definitely quite a bit different from Inventor, but I've found your videos to be very helpful in grasping the differences that I need to understand to start being productive. Just subscribed. Keep it up man, excellent work.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you so much for the kind words. Glad your finding the videos useful. If your starting out a metal fabrication business then you would be interested in the sheet metal workbench as well. I am going to have to do some tutorials on that one as I keep on meaning to. Good luck and thank you for subscribing 😊

[@pinchtwo654]

@@MangoJellySolutions no kidding I didn’t even know there was a sheet metal workbench. Thanks for the heads up, that’ll probably come in handy one day

[@giuliobuccini208]

I will confess: I create my objects in PartDesign and then I make a static copy (Part -> Simple Copy) and I use it to make arrays, sections, mirrors, etc.

[@c.augustin]

This was very helpful, since I wondered what the differences are. Nice and short! But I think it's also a matter of where you are in learning FreeCAD - as a beginner, it is easier to start with the Part Design Workbench, and that's where I am at the moment. But I can see myself starting to use the Part Workbench sometimes in the future.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Exactly, spot on there, part design is a more restrictive but guided workflow. I know professional organisations that use freecad haven't used part as they have no need. When you start getting into tricky more organic shapes and surfaces that's when the part comes in. Glad you found it useful. And thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts 👍😊

[@thefeet]

Great video. I have dabbled with FreedCAD and always seem to scratch my head when using part-design vs part or a combination of both...i know JUST enough to have been able to use it and i really like it. Will be checking out your videos! TYVM for taking the time to post these FreeCAD tutorials. I can only get better as I learn more!

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you so much for the comment, really glad you are learning from these videos. It is a step learning curve but it gets a lot easier once you get some basics under your belt.

[@paulo-kiefe]

This is a great explanation! It clarifies many good aspects of FreeCAD to newbies and transitioners from other CAD software packages. As usual, I learned a couple of new things. Thank you :)

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you for the feedback and kind comment, it's been a popular one and glad it's helped many.

[@physiqueDrummond]

this one of the rare videos I have to _slow_ _down_

[@MangoJellySolutions]

I did try to fit in a bit too much into this one.

[@shinkansen4521]

most excellent! wow wow wow, fantastic speed of displaying your description. Thanks! i will definitely watch this many more times :)

[@Kotaztrafee]

Great video! I been using Part. I switched to to Part Design after watching this video for the reason of a cleaner Model View tree. I was always confused about the Body aspect in Part Design but I'm getting the hang of it. Having a problem with pockets on slightly curved surfaces.

[@AppliedMathematician]

Thanks, I wondered when to use the part workbench as well! You provide a good clear rule of thumb in this Vid!

[@Appregator]

What is that Rule of Thumb, written out for clarity ?

[@Arzon527]

So Part design does some stuff of joining geometry automatically, but has issues if you try to go beyond the built in shortcuts. While Part takes more steps, you can arrange everything better, then just join them all in the end. So I should be using Part more.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Very much so but it all depends on your use case for the preferred route , I use part mainly as I do a lot of surface modeling and want to build surfaces separately to bring them back into a shell / solid and as you said part is way way more flexible so if I wanted to do something 'arty' I would use part. Also part is great to get your initial thoughts into 3D without worry about creating a sketch that will extrude to a solid.

[@johannestrepte246]

Thanks a lot for these explanations! As a newbie, I asked for something like this in the freecad forum some time ago, but never got an explanation that was satifactory. It always seemed to be a matter of personal preferences. I'm trying to design a wooden model aircraft in freecad. The way to go seems to start with part WB, as creating curved shapes such as wings with part design simply doesn't work when a certain complexity is exceeded (official wording is "less stable / robust", I guess). On the other hand, part design WB seems to be convenient for adding details to flat inner components such as ribs. For me, troubles start when I try to combine both. I always mess up the tree / history quickly. i don't have a clue which tree item should go where, what should be separate bodies / parts or not, how do the items relate. I would be very thankful for some advice on how to combine parts and part design in a well-structured way.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Great to hear the video has helped. I always advise to keep things modular. It's so easy to get caught up in creating the model as a whole rather than thinking what do I actually have in front of me. A wooden plane is a assembly of parts so the body, wings, ribs etc are all a part and can be modeled separately and assembled together after in something like an assembly workbench. Even when you model something simple like a tea cup you will find It's not an assembly but a composite. The cup and the handle. You would model these seperatly but boolean them together rather than assemble. Again you can have a mixture, a assembly where some parts are composite or even sub assemblies. Brake down each into a simple form will help keep that tree nice and simple and make the modelling process easier to understand rather than overwelming.

[@ObsequiousV4]

awesome. I think the part workflow subsection is the answer to my issues. I remodeled something 3 times yesterday because after trying to go back and make a change to a section, I was unable to delete a padded part without destroying the rest of the body. I managed (in the mess I made) to delete a sketch for that particular padded block but the fillets and overall geometry carried over into a later change, meaning I could have the part as is, but could not do any modifications (to my understanding) of that section.

[@TechieSewing]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. Having a plan is my weak spot 😬 so I have to wean myself from Part Design. It's just so comfortable with its integrated Create Sketch button and showing the planes to directly select.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

I know what you mean. One thing you can do is add that sketch button to the part workbench toolbar. Actually, I don't know why I haven't done this yet lol. Now I am wondering if you can get that same way to add sketches to base planes 🤔

[@TechieSewing]

@@MangoJellySolutions I've just went and added one too. I've tried to add one from Part Design but it won't quite show the planes and, what's worse, will automatically create Body which I won't need to later work in Part. But I do have a button now :)

[@lq_12]

​@@TechieSewing you need to use manipulator workbench , and put the datums in part toolbar, to modify them you'll go to map mode

[@TechieSewing]

@@lq_12 Nah, couldn't get _hold_ of manipulator workbench. I still mostly use PartDesign unless I'm experimenting, or predict I'd want to extrude open sketches. I did add 'Create sketch' to Part toolbar.

[@VorpalForceField]

Thats the cleanest and clearest explanation I have found .. Thank You for sharing .. Cheers :)

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thanks for the feedback, great to hear

[@ianritta]

This is a fantastic explanation. Thank you!

[@MangoJellySolutions]

You're very welcome, Glad it was useful 😊😊

[@josephfuller1464]

This is really useful, thank you!

[@samgrainger1554]

Really really helpfull. This kind of thing is always what slows me down

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Great to hear you enjoyed. I have another video in the schedule regarding this area which I think you may enjoy. It will be released soon

[@lillllill1il1l]

just wondered why i can't pad multiple solids on Part Design workbench. Solved!

[@winchesterlyon]

You know.. Everytime the question "Body vs Part" is asked, the content of this video is what always comes up. The problem is that most of us beginners walk away more confused, because we don't know if this is what we needed to know. Now, that i have some experience with FreeCad, I can ask again. What is the difference between a Body (the blue step-looking icon) and Part (the yellow step-looking icon and not to be confused with the "Part Workbench") ---- Both of with are in "PartDesign"? The "Part" that we're referring to is also referred to as "Std_part"... I still can't find a satisfying explanation of the difference between the two.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

FreeCAD gets confusing where there is both a part (as in std_part) and part (as in the wb). Part and Body (as in the containers) are containers that hold a origin and co-ordinate system that can be shifted and positioned around the 3D space. Body container is a concept of the part design that holds the 3D sketches and parametric operation to create a solid object where as the std_part is a generic container that can hold anything. I agree it get confusing and I find body is just a part design incarnation of a generic container.

[@sinemi3]

A question i have about part design is, how do you come a sketch into another face of an object within the same body. I can do a sketch on a face but if i want the same sketch on another face I don't know how to copy it and paste it to this other face.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Ah take a look at freecad for beginners 47 that will help you kzbin.info/www/bejne/jIOwmX5qftyIr5o

[@Just_An_Idea_For_Consideration]

Very Interested in Workflow Methodologies ie. the process that you have found to be most efficient over time from experience, so that I as a new user, can learn using that workflow, as opposed to the time it would take me to achieve that knowledge thru trial and error thx

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Great to hear you found that useful. I recently went on a bit of a research trip for answering some questions regarding using freecad for artists and this leaned even more towards the part workflow side of things because of the constant change and Organic nature of the subject. Some artist did like the idea of refining with a part design process after so they almost had a plan for an apprentice to recreate a piece.

[@VideoJocky1]

Thanks for the video.

[@Hi---There]

First more like Unigraphics logic and catia shape design style Second- Catia part design logic

[@alimirzamani979]

Hello, how to design a one solid object, the shape of which consist of two rectangular block 90 degrees to each other in the shape of PLUS (+) sign but one is slightly (half of the thickness) is outside of the other. In front view it is just a 8 line ply shape but from the right the lines are slanted. Hard to describe. I have tried to create the whole block and then cut off the portion I don't want, but it doesn't work. Appreciate if you could explain that. Thank you

[@cadcam-uz1mv]

Have you /would you consider doing a comparison video between FreeCAD master and LinkStage3, esp what differences having multiple solids in PD and internal geometry ?

[@Appregator]

What is LimkStage3 ?

[@Shenanigans3D]

Is there a way to have a custom workbench with the most used tools between the to benches?

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Your reading my mind again lol. Seting up a custom workbench is a bit involved but another way is to create custom global toolbars that can be included in any workbench. Tools, customise and click on toolbar tab. You will see two columns. The far left one drop down the drop down and select Global from the very top. Any tool bar added here will appear on all workbenches.

[@Shenanigans3D]

@@MangoJellySolutions lol.. I've seen the global and want to fiddle around with it but really haven't had the knowledge or time.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Look out soon as will be releasing a video hopefully this weekend regarding this.

[@superdau]

I've pretty much stopped using the part design workbench. Yes, you have a "history", but that doesn't help much when a change in it breaks the body half the time. E. g. because names of faces and edges change and the references for further steps break. Inserting another step somewhere is almost a guarantee for breaking a body that's a little bit more complicated than a few pads and pockets. FreeCAD's undo function not working properly in some of those cases, makes it even worse. A "part" workbench part seems much more robust. The tree like/hierarchical structure of such parts also feels a lot more logical to me than the linear "history", which is very limiting IMHO.

[@bengerber4542]

The problem really is any organic, curvy, or complex shapes in Part Design. It just can't be done in a timely manner. For example, to recreate the "Grip using Surface Tools WB" video on Part Design, one would have to individually model each of the 50 crosssection sketches individually and loft between them. Talk about messy trees...

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Funny you should say that. A few months ago I was helping a patreon design ergonomic grips and we was using Curves workbench and a large amount of lofts. It should of really been done in Blender or similar (Even people working with fusion said the same.) We got through it and had a working prototype. The tree needed some serious management though and coming back to it weeks later was a bit of a head scratcher as it just looked like a rats nest. All I can say is thank goodness to group directories.

[@windmill10]

Alas. I was trying to follow along what you were doing but it is waaaaay to fast to see what you are doing.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Sorry about that, this is more of a demonstration / theory lesson on the reasons why they are different. I am shooting a new one for the new series I am releasing so hope you find that one better.

[@windmill10]

@@MangoJellySolutions Thanks for your great work btw. Hope to see your new video.

[@dummag4126]

Whattt??? I tried to see this video at 0.25X but I must be a fly to be able to follow

[@raddinox2707]

I use the Part Design workbench all the time, any other WB makes the tree look filthy.

[@BillSmithem]

Great video. I think I might grok the difference now (or maybe after watching this a few more times). I do wish you'd slow down a little, as playing it at 3/4 speed so I can get all the words just sounds weird. :)

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thanks for the feedback, glad you like the video. I was in two minds wether to release this or not. I should of made the video to explain in 10 minutes rather than 5. Was trying something different but I think the subject matter is a bit too broad, sorry about that.

[@BillSmithem]

@@MangoJellySolutions No apology necessary, I'm happy you've decided to address this. I'm totally lost as to why I should choose one workbench over the other. I'm (was) a software engineer and have no problem coding designs in OpenSCAD, but I get lost in all the possible options in FreeCAD. Most times I haven't a clue where to start, work myself into a corner where "I can't get there from here", and reference one of your videos to get going again. Appreciate all the hard work you put into creating them.

[@FPV777]

Nice but too fast 😮😢

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Yes this one was a bit fast, apologies. This one might be a bit better for you, it's on the same subject kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z56qemysm9h2eaM

[@FPV777]

@@MangoJellySolutions thanks 🙏👍

[@AshleyWragg]

I would love to see a tutorial on modeling a cylindrical pot that has a curved side that runs from the top larger diameter to the bottom smaller diameter, but the tricky part being that the outside curved surface is covered in horizontal equally spaced grooves that have a semicircle profile separated by flat bars. So, from top to bottom, flat, and then concave semicircle, flat section, concave semicircle... And this patter happens about 30 times extending from the top to the bottom of the pot. Thanks

[@Dogman-45]

The video has great information but … Constructive criticism: SLOW DOWN! You are speaking at a rapid file pace while moving and selecting with the mouse at light speed. I much prefer to have a longer video than a shorter one that I have to rewatch several times to findout "what in the hell did he do here and there".

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you for the feedback, this was designed for a quick overview (maybe too quic) and appreciate the comment. I tried to cram as much information in this one video and the delivery was a bit of experiment, which, as you probably can tell, I will not be doing again as it was way to fast. There is another video in the 0.22 series that covers similar which is much slower pace.

[@beingabdaal950]

Hi sir @mangojellysolutions if I need a cad file can you be of assistance please I failed drawing my own cad also how much would it cost